Teslas Levitating Sphere

Fact or misunderstanding?
by
Mathias Bge
December, 2007
Tesla came up withor is attributed toa number of designs for flying machines, all of them wingless:
1. the drop-formed craft that is depicted in some fantasy-like drawings that appeared in magazines
and newspapers at the time, but whose system of propulsion is unknown, although some people
claim they were to be electrogravitic (1910s).
2. the propeller-fitted craft described in his U.S. patents [2, 3] (1920s).
3. the flying stove, which is said to be a intertial drive system. Many inertial drives have been
proposed, but few (if any) have proved to be viable. Keep in mind, that Tesla was originally a
mechanical engineer (time unknown).
4. the discoid craft described in the KeelyNet file ufo6.asc titled "NIKOLA TESLA MAN
AHEAD OF HIS TIME (or How To Build a UFO)" by Bill Jones. I call this craft the "pie slice
craft" since its ceramic skin is covered in 16 pie slice electrodes on either side, each connected
to its own Tesla coil. This design might be Bill Jones own creation, and he just refers to Tesla
to gain more credibility.
5. and, last but not least, the strange Levitating Sphere (my term!), described in (yet another!)
KeelyNet file [1, point 4]. This is the topic of this text, and I will try to explain the similarities
to the MAGVID.
Note that this is all based on an alleged Tesla quote I found in the KeelyNet file mentioned above [1,
point 4]. According to the author of this document, Tesla allegedly said (only text in quotes):
"I can place a ring around the Earth at the equator and move it anywhere I so wish." It
is CLAIMED that Tesla built a levitating sphere comprised of a ball with a single ring
at the equator. When this ring was fed with an alternating current at high potential, one
half of the sphere became very hot, the other very cold. The sphere levitated to a height
dependent on the energy applied.

Figure 1: Teslas Levitating Sphere with the the equatorial ring

In his autobiography, [6, p. 55], Tesla, on the other hand, writes:
Another one of my projects was to construct a ring around the equator which would, of
course, float freely and could be arrested in its spinning motion by reactionary forces,
thus enabling travel at a rate of about one thousand miles an hour, impracticable by rail.
The reader will smile. The plan was difficult of execution, I will admit, but not nearly
so bad as that of a well known New York professor, who wanted to pump the air from
the torrid to temperate zones, entirely forgetful of the fact that the Lord had provided a
gigantic machine for this purpose.
The very same thing is described by John J. ONeill in his Tesla biography [7]:
The other project with which he amused himself was drawn upon an even larger scale
and required a still higher order of imagination. He conceived the project of building a
ring around the earth at the Equator, somewhat resembling the rings around the planet
Saturn. The earth ring, however, was to be a solid structure whereas Saturns rings are
made up of dust particles.
Confusing, eh? I have e-mailed Jerry Decker twice, but have yet (as of 2006-03-09) to receive any
response from him as to the origin and veracity of the quote. Also, I never found anything else on this
contraption on the net, but maybe I should try again now :-)
Which version should one believe? Are two separate things described, with an equatorial ring being
the common denominator, but, where:
1. one is moving the sphere/planet Erth, itself (i.e. what were looking for herer), and,
2. the other is a totally unrealistic way to travel from one point at the Earths equator to another
(how do you arrest the rotation of a ring rotating outside of the Earths equator?).
2

Maybe Tesla thought a little further, after himself dismissing the idea in point 2: instead of rotating
the ring, why not let it enclose a magnetized sphere ("planet") and then connect one of his Tesla coils
to the ring and see what happens!?
One night, while driving home from our summer house in July 2003, I had one of those rare moments
of insight:
A ring-formed conductor [reddish brown in figure 1 above, green-red in figures below] in which a
high-voltage AC current is flowing back and forth, with a static central electromagnet [blue sphere in
figure 1 above, a small round green-orange bar with fields lines in figures below] could be equated
to the four-coil system of the MAGVID with its rotating virtual bar magnet [cyan-magenta bar that
"rotates"] and ditto static central electromagnet [small round green-orange bar in center, shown with
field lines]
0

90

180

270

If you build a discoid craft round this then POOF! you have a flying saucer!? Well, with the addition
of some form control system, of course. And maybe even a cabin for humans ;-)
Please note that this is my highly personal hypothesis. Its quite possible that I really have screwed
things up here, but Ill take that chance.
If my hypothesis is correct, it means that there could be an even simpler method to get propulsion
(and maybe free energy) than the MAGVID. If you replace the four coils of the MAGVID
As to the control and steering of the device, I assume you could use a system similar to the one I refer
to in the my annotated MAGVID document [4].

References
[1] Jerry Decker, Jerry Deckers Anti-Gravity Correlatives,
deckcorr.htm, 1997.
3

http://www.keelynet.com/gravity/

[2] Nikola Tesla U.S. patent 1,655,113 Method Of Aerial Transportation,

http://www.keelynet.com/

tesla/01655113.pdf

[3] Nikola Tesla U.S. patent 1,655,114 Apparatus For Aerial Transportation,

http://www.keelynet.

com/tesla/01655114.pdf

[4] A description of the MAGVID, including the famous USENET

"GroomLakeColonelRevealsAll" (with my annotations), [not finished yet!]

post

entitled

[5] Vencislav Bujics MAGVID e-mail list on Yahoo Groups, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MAGVID/.

[6] Nikola Tesla, MY INVENTIONS, Barnes & Noble Books, 1995.
[7] John J. ONeill, NIKOLA TESLA - PRODIGAL GENIUS, Ives Washburn, New York, 1944.